The story
History
In early 1855, John Clough Holmes, secretary of the agricultural society, convinced the Michigan legislature to pass an act establishing "a State Agricultural School" to be located on a site selected by the Michigan State Agricultural Society within ten miles of Lansing. On February 12, 1855, Michigan Governor Kinsley S. Bingham signed a bill establishing the nation's first agriculture college, the Agricultural College of the State of Michigan. William J. Beal called Holmes "the most important agent" of the college. Holmes Hall, the home of the Lyman Briggs College, is named in his honor.
The State Board of Education was designated as the institution's governing body. The board also oversaw the Michigan State Normal School in Ypsilanti, which had opened in 1852. Classes began on May 13, 1857, with three buildings, five faculty members, and 63 male students.
Joseph R. Williams, the first president and a passionate promoter of interdisciplinary liberal arts education, encouraged a curriculum that went far beyond practical agriculture: "The course of instruction in said college shall include the following branches of education, viz: an English and scientific course, natural philosophy, chemistry, botany, animal and vegetable anatomy and physiology, geology, mineralogy, meteorology, entomology, veterinary art, mensuration, leveling and political economy, with bookkeeping and the mechanic arts which are directly connected with agriculture..." From its inception, the Agricultural College of the State of Michigan offered courses of study that would characterize the land-grant philosophy of higher education after the passage of the Morrill Act in 1862. Michigan's agricultural college educated people to be well-informed citizens, as well as good farmers.
However, after just two years, Williams ran into conflict with the managing State Board of Education. Despite Williams' eloquent defense of an all-round education for the masses, the board saw the college as inefficient and had far deviated from the agriculture focus as the founder, John Clough Holmes, had anticipated. Indeed, some agriculturalists began protesting against the college's unpractical curriculum with some even calling for the college's abolition. Williams eventually resigned in 1859. The board then reduced the curriculum to a two-year, vocation-oriented farming program, which proved catastrophic and resulted almost overnight in a drastic reduction in enrollment. There was a high demand for an all-round education grounded in the liberal arts tradition instead of a specialized agriculture program, a fact the board disregarded. With a sharp decrease in tuition revenue, the college was soon in dire financial straits and threatened with dissolution.
In 1860, Williams became acting lieutenant governor and helped pass the Reorganization Act of 1861. This restored the college's four-year curriculum and gave the college the power to grant master's degrees. Under the act, a newly created body, known as the State Board of Agriculture, took over from the State Board of Education in running the institution. The college changed its name to State Agricultural College, and its first class graduated in the same year.
In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Morrill Land-Grant Acts to support similar colleges nationally, the first instance of federal funding for education. Shortly thereafter, on March 18, 1863, the state designated the college its land-grant institution making Michigan State University the nation's first land-grant college. The federal funding had rescued the Agricultural College from extinction.
Although the school's then-isolated location limited student housing and enrollment during the 19th century, the college became reputable, largely due to alumni who went on to distinguished careers, many of whom led or taught in other land-grant colleges. While the institution emphasized scientific agriculture, its graduates went into a wide variety of professions.
The college first admitted women in 1870, although there were no female residence halls. The few women who enrolled boarded with faculty families or made the arduous stagecoach trek from Lansing. From the early days, female students took the same rigorous scientific agriculture courses as male students. In 1896, the faculty created a "Women Course" that melded a home economics curriculum with liberal arts and sciences. That same year, the college turned the Abbot Hall male dorm into a women's dormitory.
Read the full text
It was not until 1899 that the State Agricultural College admitted its first African American student, William O. Thompson. After graduation, he taught at what is now Tuskegee University. A few years later, Myrtle Craig became the first woman African American student to enroll at the college. Two years later, the college changed its name to Michigan Agricultural College.
During the early 20th century, Michigan Agricultural College expanded its curriculum well beyond agriculture. By 1925, it had expanded enough to change its name to Michigan State College of Agriculture and Applied Science (MSC), or "Michigan State" for short. In 1941, the Secretary of the State Board of Agriculture, John A. Hannah, became president of the college.
After World War II, Hannah began the largest expansion in the institution's history, with the help of the 1945 G.I. Bill, which helped World War II veterans gain college educations. One of Hannah's strategies was to build a new dormitory building, enroll enough students to fill it, and use the income to start construction of another dormitory. Under his plan, enrollment increased from 15,000 in 1950 to 38,000 in 1965.
Six years later, during the school's centennial year of 1955, the State of Michigan officially designated the school as a university, even though Hannah and others felt it had been one for decades. The college then became Michigan State University of Agriculture and Applied Science. During the 1950s, Michigan State University was the "preeminent" example of a group of former agricultural colleges which had already evolved into state colleges and were attempting to become research universities. In 1957, Hannah continued MSU's expansion by co-founding Michigan State University–Oakland, now Oakland University, with Matilda Dodge Wilson.
After the ratification of the Michigan Constitution of 1964, the university's governing body changed its name from the State Board of Agriculture to the Michigan State University Board of Trustees. At that time, the school's name was officially shortened to simply Michigan State University, though since the 1920s longstanding convention omitted the "Agriculture and Applied Science" part of the name.
MSU was affiliated with Oakland University in Rochester Hills, Michigan, from the time of the latter's founding in 1957 (as Michigan State University-Oakland), until 1970 when Oakland University gained institutional independence.
In September 2005, President Lou Anna Simon called for Michigan State to become the global model leader for land-grant institutions by 2012. Her plans included creating a new residential college and increased grants awarded from the National Institutes of Health past the US$100 million mark. While there are over 100 land-grant universities in the United States, she stated she would like Michigan State University to be the leader.
2021 hazing death
On November 20, 2021, Phat Nguyen died during an off-campus hazing incident in Pi Alpha Phi fraternity. The 21-year-old fraternity pledge and three other pledges were found unresponsive at 2 a.m. and transported to the local hospital. Despite performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation on Nguyen, firefighters were unable to save him. The fraternity chapter was banned by the university and the national fraternity.
2023 mass shooting
On February 13, 2023, a mass shooting occurred on campus that resulted in three killed and five injured before the gunman took his own life. Police have yet to identify a motive. Classes were canceled for one week following the shooting, and several student-led protests supporting gun control legislation were held at the Michigan State Capitol in the week that followed.
From Wikipedia’s article on Michigan State University, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5